


The Echoing Footnotes

by Ash_Cassidy97



Series: Christmas and Birthday 2015-2016 [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: BAMF Rory Williams, Character Study, Multi, Rory Williams character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5965639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character study of Rory, Amy, and River Song. And the Doctor is in there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Echoing Footnotes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morbidcassanova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morbidcassanova/gifts).



"If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.” 

\- Charles Bukowski

* * *

** It Wasn't a Choice (It Wasn't Already Determined) **

 

Rory Williams. He grew up with a single parent dad who liked to meddle and a girl who never learned not to give her heart away. He grew up with long hands, a big nose, short hair, trainers and meddlesome fingers. He grew up as second best. Amelia Pond was always going to love Her Raggedy Man. 

 

That was fine, being the second picked, because he wasn’t the last picked. He wasn’t the last resort, just an odd sort of side step in a dance. A stumble. 

 

That was fine, he didn’t need the spotlight. He grew up with Amelia Pond and Mels (he grew up with River Song and Amy Pond).

 

He was thought of as a wimp and he was fearless because he grew up with legends and didn’t need to be one. Let that burn for a moment. He didn’t need to breathe the fire until Amy taught him how it felt (he never really needed it at all). He started running toward something long before he started running with the Doctor.

 

He didn’t experience a man in a blue box. He didn’t not partake in the ritual of fishfingers and custard. He experienced a tiny red head. I really hope he always understood why the Doctor was fascinated with Amy Pond. How can you hate somebody for loving the same thing you do? Because you share an incredibly close bond with that person.

 

There’s a difference between being the second best and being the last one left.

 

It took him a thousand thousand years to learn it (it took him five minutes).

 

It took him a thousand thousand years to learn that running and sitting still were mutually exclusive when it came to the doctor(It took him years with Amelia Pond. They ran in the same small town after all). Don’t you dare think that he sat there like a vacant statue for countless years. He watched with vigor. He watched with the air of constant vigilance.

 

The Doctor could fly away, leave the little folk on their rock, play the Big Game (isn’t it ironic that the whole universe revolved around one girl’s wish. isn’t ironic that nobody else mattered?). That was his skill, the ability to save the whole wide galaxy through a small group of people. (He played the big game because he was kind and dangerous, and he trusted few other people to make those decisions.) And then, if those people were very very lucky, he left them while they were still alive (they didn’t consider themselves lucky at all, at least, not entirely). He didn’t carry guns because he was afraid they would cause destruction; he was afraid that they would make it easier for him to cause destruction.

 

Amy could wait because she was still carried a child’s heart, a dream that she was Better, that she was Enough to be saved. She grew up with Mels and Rory Williams (River Song and the Last Centurion). Of course she had the nerve to follow the Doctor. 

 

Of course Mels and Rory had the nerve to be different; they grew up with Amy Pond.

 

They all followed lightning before they ever knew the doctor. They knew it in their bones, knew the danger, and the swearing/running of a more normal kind.

 

I love that moment when the Doctor starts to explain the TARDIS to Rory, the first Rory. And Rory has read the Science and you could literally see the Doctor’s face fall but he smiles for a moment like there’s a secret to the magic. That’s a Thing, right there, just there. The magic isn’t lost when you explain something, it’s found. I love that part of the series. You never think this man is much, just another boyfriend, but go back, watch it again. Can’t you feel it? Look a little closer, that’s the lesson in the details.

 

He defended his soon to be wife with a broomstick. Rory Williams grew up with Harry Potter. He fell right in step behind Amy, not totally trusting the Doctor but following Amy all the same. Dragon’s breath.

 

Rory Williams died and came back to save his own victim. Of course he learned to breath fire.

 

He could wait because he was a stumble in the grand plan and his wife was the dance. You can lead from behind just as well. He didn’t even really lead from behind, just an inch to the left of Amy. It took him a thousand thousand years to remember that he was iron, not plastic. It took him five minutes. His skin just doesn’t know it. He was iron before the Doctor came along, before the thousand thousand years of solitude. How long can you last without calling a friend? His soul was hammered out by following Amy Pond, by chancing after something he didn’t dream he would ever get to keep.

 

He was the stumble and iron behind Amy Pond. He was the logic behind the heart. Well, he did try to take on aliens with inadequate weapons, so maybe he was less logical than previously thought.

 

He was reverted back to normal after the Bang, the End. He had his life kickstarted by the Doctor once more, and he couldn’t find a hint of regret inside of himself. He was flesh and blood, but he  _ remembered. _

 

Rory Williams divorced Amy Pond because she was his heart but she lost her faith a long time ago. He gave her up because he loved her more than she loved him (Rory was a moron). She was done with daydreams of unlost men. She wanted to be normal, try it on like a dress and show it off at a party. She threw on makeup like armour and all Rory could do was to throw on trainers. He found his faith.

 

It’s harder to have faith when it’s not being tested. You are not the chosen one. You will not save a thousand worlds ( _ if you are very very lucky, you’ll save yourself _ ). You are normal, empty, easily forgotten. Amy blew her face up on posters and signed autographs. Rory Williams was never the spotlight, but maybe Amy got tired of people dying for her. She never really got tired of running but didn’t know that running and sitting still weren’t mutually exclusive.

 

The Doctor left and there wasn’t anybody to make the choice. There was no second best, there was today and tomorrow. Rory had a thousand thousand years to learn what the Doctor felt for nine hundred.

 

Think of that. Rory Williams lived longer than the Doctor. He may have even been a touch wiser or seen a little more. He had fought for his love and she still may leave him but that was alright in the end. He may have been a little kinder to another man in love with his wife after all that. I wish they had talked about that. He was the last of his kind. I really wish they had talked about that.

 

Amy Pond had five minutes and the end of the world.

 

When you lead from the front, it’s hard to remember that you can be helpless. You can be worth a thousand thousand years. You don’t always need to breath fire.

 

The Doctor and Amy were so alike in that moment, can you feel it? The Doctor, at his own wedding, didn’t think that anybody wanted to save him, Amy, a girl who dreamt so long that her precious God would save her, and they didn’t believe it when it actually happened in a slightly twisted sense. They both had thrown light across a dark sky, praying that it would change things, knowing that it wouldn’t, finally realizing that they had to be the live wire.

 

Amy spent a long time, learning that she was the only one who could save herself. And Rory had been there, always there to step up if she needed him. Problem: she hadn’t needed him for a long time.

 

Rory Williams grew older than the doctor and Amy Pond had five minutes. Her flesh and blood fiance died. She was killed by her plastic Roman Husband (the marriage was just a ceremony) and five minutes later, the world ended. Wouldn’t you stumble? She woke up and learned that she loved a man who wouldn’t forget her, not ever, a man who stumbled behind her but kept running.

 

It’s easy to love a man who will forget you, a man who you could never marry. Rory Williams could tell you as much. It’s much harder to love somebody who sees your face before they go to sleep and trusts you to be there the next day. A man who loves the running as much as you do. It’s harder to fall in love with the normal because it’s right there. It’s not a fairy tale of white suitcases and red rain boots, it’s arguing with the chip and pin machine and holy shit, why are there legos there-we don’t even have children, and are we out of light bulbs again? It’s the stupid things, love is. It’s not grand gestures. It’s the stupid simple things.

 

The Doctor earned a little respect for the new Rory, the one who was older than the Doctor for once. The Doctor could fly away because he could always come back. Rory had a duty he wouldn’t trade anything for. The Doctor had a duty that he would wish he could spend years running away from. There was a little more understanding there.

 

Rory Williams had a thousand years of being alone. He didn’t get old and bitter; he just got a little bit kinder. He had iron under his bones but was a little more willing to accept the Doctor, to stop competing. And the Doctor never even thought of taking the long way round for anybody (he would consider it because of Amy and Rory). There was more than a little understanding there.

 

After the Daleks, the Ponds were both different.

 

Amy found her fire and her faith again. She nearly lost her humanity, lost Rory, lost her touch stone. She learned to lead with Rory at her side, recognizing that their love was equal, that they were equal. Rory learned that he was never just a stumble. The Doctor was waving arms, dancing an alien jig. Rory danced a slow waltz wit Amy, a timeless thing. It was more than good enough. It was more than worth saving, it was worth remembering.

 

It’s funny, that time with the two rooms. Rory had a wife who was as old as he was. She looked it. It’s better that it didn’t matter to the Roman. I wonder sometimes about that line, “you’re turning me into you.” And I wonder about the lost years of both Ponds.

 

I wish they had talked more of those differences in Amy and Rory because of the Flesh. Amy had renounced them at first and then been accepting. Rory hadn’t even stopped to consider. Draw your own similarities between him and the Doctor there, right there.

 

They went through Demons’ Run. Rory was still a soldier from Rome. He didn’t have a gun. He had a screwdriver and a sword(he didn’t really need either). He’d spent years wearing Roman armour. He would’ve worn his plaid shirts and trainers if it wasn’t for the Doctor.The doctor had an army. Amy had herself and her kindness. She was her own fire and she borrowed some of Rory’s iron. That’s alright, Rory blew up a small quadrant of the universe and traumatized Cybermen: he had his own fire. 

 

Rory learned that Amy will always be saved, the Doctor comes through in his insanity. But you can’t save everybody. Yet you can save some people if you run hard enough. He spent thousands of thousands of years running and he ran the fastest with the Doctor and Amy.

 

You don’t run after things like that when you don’t love.

 

They ran after Melody.

 

They couldn’t save her because she didn’t need saving. The timeline was already set. She saved herself and the Doctor saved both of them. Amy raised her to follow, to cause trouble. Oh don’t tell me that it was only Mels in there, in those places of authority? Don’t tell me there was only a time child that caused trouble? Amelia Pond was a girl forgotten by so many people. Don’t you dare tell me that Rory didn’t receive a phone call to bail them out. Amy was just better at not getting caught. Don’t you dare tell me that it wasn’t Rory in there as well with his other best friend. 

 

Rory raised her to follow, to lead from behind and to have iron under her skin before she ever met the Doctor. They taught her to breath iron and fire in the same way the TARDIS whistles with the brakes on and always always has an extra cup of tea in the kitchen. It was a particular slap upside the face with a sword and a cuttingly gentle smile.

 

Mels didn’t run from the TARDIS.

 

She ran straight inside. It was her mother in a fashion. She carried a gun inside and shot it on a dare. 

 

Her tiny hands must’ve been shaking in that suit. She might’ve grown up with ragged pieces of clothe and bullets, clutching at life with tiny hands.

 

She didn’t need salvation. 

 

Mels saved herself (River saved others). She found her parents and the Doctor, a tiny child. She found a girl with a fire for a heart and a boy who never thought he would come first. Penny in the air. She was raised by her kid parents and couldn’t bring herself to hate a man she was destined to kill. She saved a man because she trusted her parents’ judgement and longed to defy destiny (was that when she was supposed to kill him? Is it over?).

 

I think Rory had to be just a tiny bit proud. She was his daughter after all. At this point, he was just rolling with the punches.

 

And they kept running. They ran through dinosaur filled starships and a western paperback town with running electricity. They ran through their own daughter’s wedding. They were all soldiers of one type or another then. It was not a nice polite affair with cake. It was a battleground. There were no tearful goodbyes. The last words the Doctor said were a lie (the last words the Doctor said were hope).

 

They ran through normal life just as well. Rory worked in an A&E as a nurse. Don’t tell me he didn’t wear trainers. He collected medical equipment on alien planets and Earth hospitals alike. Don’t tell me that he wore a different pair of shoes for the Doctor.  Don’t tell me that Amy Pond put on different masquera for the Doctor. They both wore their suits of armor. They both were each other's armor.

 

The Doctor stayed for a year, don’t you remember? Sitting still and running aren’t mutually exclusive and that’s important. Nothing really changed that year except that the Ponds kept the fridge stocked with fish fingers and custard (and possibly didn’t put fresh sheets on the guest bedroom but well, let’s leave that up to your imagination).

 

And they broke. Amy had her faith in a Time Lord and Rory had his faithless faith. He had faith formed in grubby school yards and the duty of a sentinel. The Doctor was wrong. Rory had faith in Amy, the Doctor and himself. He wasn’t afraid to die or that Amy would die. Rory found that his faith in himself was unshakeable. There was no single room for him, no hellish torment he hadn’t already undergone that would make him faithless.

 

And they died. Mels’ parents. The Doctor’s inlaws. They died so often, it’s becoming a running joke. Heh. 

 

River died too in one timestream, don’t you dare forget. Don’t you dare forget that sacrifice, that last show of simple love. Don’t you dare forget what the Doctor will have to go through one day. He watched his wife die for him and he didn’t know why. He’ll have to give a woman he loves a screwdriver to kill herself with, to save others, to save herself with, though she doesn’t know it. She never quite thought she was worth saving. She was, more so than the Doctor in his eyes. So don’t you dare forget.

 

But the Ponds died. They fell off a ledge because they ran so far they went back in time for the last time. The Doctor faced their tombstone but not those years they must’ve lived. Funny how that goes unspoken of. Funny how both characters disappear because they were deemed not important enough. They got written off the pages like they weren’t clever enough to write their own.

 

So yes, the Ponds went from life to death in one second. Bullshit. Don’t you dare tell me they stopped running. Don’t you dare say that they didn’t lead two lives. The Girl With A Fire Heart and a man who stumbled. 

 

And who’s to say they didn’t run into Jack Harkness.

 

They backpacked for the Doctor’s death before, drove a car through tall grass for him when he wouldn’t call. They ran for all their long lives. They had each other and that was more than enough.

 

Oh no, they kept running because they became lightening then. They chose each other and left a Time Lord stuck in time.

 

If Demons’ Run was the Doctor’s highest point, this day was the Ponds’.

 

They were lightening and a storm at the center at the universe because they made a very simple choice, one that they would never regret for more than a heartbeat. They were not the footnotes or the echoing of the dead Doctor’s friends before them.

 

The Doctor was a footnote that day, a mad genius, playing the Game. Good, because the companions of before were all footnotes in the end. The main hero survived after all. Add to his tragic backstory why don’t you? Funny how the Game was finished by River Song and the Ponds. Funny how he saw it as a sacrifice. They would’ve have thought it a choice. It wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t already determined. Paradox. But they lived and died for those. They lived and died for each other.

* * *

 

** Penny in the Air **

 

The first time the Doctor heard ‘spoilers’ he heard it from an archeologist. The first time Melody, not River Song-not yet, heard the word, she heard it from a man she was destined to kill. A man she was going to kill, didn’t want her to know her own future. Think what that would do to any sane person, think what it would do to a less than sane person. Instead, she got a blue book to keep her own secrets, shaped like a TARDIS. Bigger on the inside. It’s pages felt like the word ‘spoilers’. A lot more was contained in that word than the eight letters suggested.

 

She found out her parents were magic before they’d ever met. Her mom tried to kill her with a dull bullet and shaky hands. The Doctor was worth more than her. The Doctor tried to stop her mom.

 

She ran, hard and fast. She ran to an alley. She reassured a man that everything would be okay because he looked worried for her. She shifted and changed and grew up with her toddler parents.

 

Mels was trouble. She was in and out of the police office, mother always on her tail. She grew up with Amelia Pond, a girl waiting for her daughter/friend’s husband. Of course she was going to be trouble. Is she not worth being saved? If she got arrested enough, maybe somebody would stop her before she killed the Doctor. If you’re going to be bad, do it right at least. She grew up with Rory Williams who always played second fiddle to Amelia Pond. Penny in the air said he was always better than that. Too bad his wife thought he was gay.

 

Of course she drove a car right up to the door of her future. Mels didn’t run away. She just had to take the long way round. She brought a gun. She cocked the thing and shot it. Don’t con a conwoman. The TARDIS landed exactly where it needed to land because this was her child, her baby. She stole the Doctor, sure. Damn right the TARDIS would have a hand in conceiving a woman who would exactly do the same.

 

Mels met a man who knew everything about her, everything she didn’t know. And she could ask but he wouldn’t answer.

 

She gave her life away in a fit of desperation. Her mother and father believed in the Doctor. She killed him. And she knew Amelia Pond before she became Amy Pond. She owed him a future debt, maybe just maybe this would save him. Maybe this was when she killed him, maybe she had beaten a fixed point in time.

 

Spoilers were how she lived her life. River Song, she had to not let him know now, because he wouldn’t know. Nobody bothered to tell her that she was not guilty, not until the Doctor and isn’t that ironic?

 

Of course she became an archeologist. She grew up in the 21st century. She grew up with Indiana Jones movies. Be a little bit more surprised that she carried a gun and not a whip. She went looking for the wild things because she was not her mother. She would not calmly wait in red rain boots and hold a white suitcase. There is a reason her hair is bushy and loud. She was going to be a time lord’s wife. Damn right she wasn’t a princess, waiting to be saved (maybe just maybe if she met her future head on, she could prevent his death).

 

She saw her dad all grown up, taking down Hitler. She always saw her mom scared and afraid. She met her mom right after Rory had ended his thousand year sentential.  She met her mom, when she was still Amy Pond without Rory Williams. She met the Angels and conquered them. The Doctor didn’t know her, not yet. Apparently he’d run into her before. And the Church was there. 

 

Was it their penitence? Did Demons’ Run happen yet? Was it going to?

 

And there was a scared twenty-something in her midst. River Song wore the face of an older woman and yet she was barely older than Amy Pond. She was barely an adolescent in Time Lord years. She dove straight into danger because she grew up with kid parents, grubby hands, wobbly knees, and a fierce appreciation that there would be no great savior in her life. She watched her mother wait a long time for her savior. She had to reassure her that the Doctor would save her far too many times.

 

You ever stop and wonder about all those times she said “the Doctor did it”? I wonder a lot if she was trying to tell her mother something. This man is no savior. He is no god. Stop praying.

 

She barely knew the Doctor when she married him. Her first actual memory of him was a man telling a red haired woman not to shoot. She ran because these were people playing the big game, the one to save the whole Earth. She grew up with Amelia Pond, and the remnant of the Doctor. She grew up with Rory Williams. The third time she met him, he had lived a thousand thousand years. And then she saw them lose her as a baby. She couldn’t save herself because she already had.

 

In the end, she had to meet a man she loved and he knew nothing of her. She didn’t run away. Creepy library and tourists. The Doctor saved her in the end, a woman he didn’t know, a woman he would love.

 

If Rory Williams was a stumble, River had always been the penny in the air. She had saved herself enough of the time. She had a lot in common with her dad after all.

 

She was his wife but she was never in the foreground, was she? She never got her own story and that never made sense to me. River Song was just a tragic song in the end. Amy and Rory lost her, and the Doctor saved her in the end. Well, it just added to their tragic backstories.

 

Well fuck that.

 

Give me a story where she gets her own adventures. Where she is not the footnote at the end of hero’s tale because that is bullshit. Give me a story where she finds people, invents her own time travel, where she chases her own fights down.

 

She is the daughter of Amy Pond and Rory Williams and the daughter of the TARDIS. Don’t you dare tell me she was defined by just the Doctor and the Silence.

 

Penny in the air indeed. I think if they ever gave her a chance to land, she wouldn’t have landed face up or down. I think she’d be that one in a million of landing exactly on her side and kept spinning.

* * *

 

** Rumble that Pulls You In **

Amelia Pond collected hand-made figurines of the Doctor. Amy Pond hid them in dusty shelves, abandoned them like she would be back the next day. She lost her childhood the same way you buy a plant, somewhat kill it and then leave it there like a plant grave to remind yourself. I wonder how many times she did such a thing before the dust settled and if she ever disturbed it.

 

She raised Rory Williams on legends, silently asked him to be those legends. She raised him to come second, but she never thought it of him. He was the only one to believe you. If you repeat the delusion of Santa, children believe it. Could you blame your parents for telling you about Santa when you got the best gifts? She led because that had always been the way it was. Mels insulted her God and got arrested.

 

Her parents were killed by a Crack in her wall and she met a madman with a box. Amelia Pond was never going to be normal. She studied history of ancient Roman.  **_She studied history_ ** (she would have a daughter who would go on to become one of the greatest archeologists in all of time).

 

What if she had never met the Doctor, she would have a pretty normal life. Amy Pond would’ve gone on to be just as brilliant, just with her feet always on Earth. I wonder if she would have still found some way to explore the stars. But it’s a mote point. Amy Pond was never going to simply live her life with her feet on one planet.

 

She grew up with the idea that Gods traveled in blue boxes. She locked him into a car. Her outfit was a lie and she was dating Rory Williams. She wore high heels and short skirts and made a living out of kissing strange people. Maybe something of Mels had sunk in. This man wasn’t a god, but she had kept her faith. Dust covered her toys but they had never been thrown out. Her wedding dress would be hung right beside the other impossible dreams.

 

People either damn her or mock her for her faith. How can you believe in a man who would lie to you? How can you pray to a man who will run fast but never be able to save you? You would pat her on the back and refuse to have the same morals. Good job, Peter Pan, Neverland is just a dream but good job for still dreaming.

 

She grew up and never quite lost her belief. Mock her all you want. She’s bitten people for less.

 

Amy followed the Time Lord, because she was sick of walking out in front, of being the only one who believed. Rory believed in Amy and Mels but it was a second hand faith, his belief in the Doctor.

 

Her God was so very old and dangerous but he was above all else kind.

 

She always planned to go back, back to Leadworth, to Rory, to her dress in that corner. I don’t know if she ever truly did.

 

She ran. She met monsters who were kind and a woman who would one day be known as her daughter. She met angels and holy men who manned a battle ground. Years later, she would know that River Song was just as scared but had kid parents who knew that fear was not the end. But Amy Pond had other worries that the Doctor’s girlfriend at the time. She had an angel in her eye. Years later, she would want to go back and reassure her daughter that it would be fine.

 

(You could say that River knew it would. Time can be rewritten.)

 

She chose her husband in that dream reality. Rory was never to know that Amy would kill herself rather than live without him. For that, I do not know. And for a brief, truthful moment, the Doctor was second place.

 

She faced off a dozen different dangers. She faced her own husband who did not remember her. Amy had five minutes. Five minutes, the end of the world and a wedding to go through. Rory Williams had a thousand thousand years. Do not dare presume that she got the easier path.

 

She threw on designer clothes the same way she threw on her good tennis shoes (they had duct tape). She walked through poster ads the same way she had walked through World War II. She would win her war for peace, to sit still. And she watched her husband throw on running shoes with undesirable envy. But she was sick of people dying for her.

 

It’s funny how Amy never thought of Rory as second place. Ever. You hide when you’re scared. You don’t have to move to hide. Some people curl up in a corner. Others storm the castle and make the monsters regret ever making them afraid.

 

I think Amy gave up on being a storm the moment she chose to be with Rory. Rory was sheet lightning and the Doctor was a rumble in the distance. But Amy? Amy was always going to be the same small child with a crack in her wall and more kitchen skills than most adults.

 

Amy was an earthquake, rumbling everybody around her, pulling them in like gravity as the Earth collapsed.

  
the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Me- this will be a tiny fic, barely .5K.  
> One month later: Damn it. And it was late. Sorry, love. Part of it was that Netflix canceled its contract with BBC and I was on the third episode before watching the Series 5 finale. Yep. That's why it ends on an odd note.
> 
> I'm really really really sorry this is so late.


End file.
